Kanchan Belavadi

The most important template is the Campaign calendar (of activities) – that everyone can track. A good campaign calendar gives a clear view of All active campaigns Gives a clear timeline Identifies owners Lists outcomes expected Outlines asks and challenges My favourite is the product launch checklist, simply because it has too many moving parts and is a very critical finale to a product that is usually long in the making. A good checklist again lists owners, timelines, dependencies and next ste ...Read More

Demand generation: reaching out to prospects, engaging with them and building pipeline. More broad based and focused mostly on customer acquisition.   Growth marketing: more focused on the entire journey from customer acquisition to retention. This would include cross-selling, upselling to customers, so the journey continues. This also is a lot more data driven, where you’d access information about the customer’s usage of your product and leverage in-app features to reach out to customers.   For ...Read More

What is the objective that you want to drive? Is it customer acquisition? Is the top of your funnel healthy, but conversions aren’t? Are you looking at optimizing cost and campaign performance?   The answers to the above questions should give you the primary metrics and KPIs that you need to monitor.   Some metrics that will show up are: MQLs, SQLs, etc., which help you monitor your customer acquisition strategy Metrics like, Sign ups, Meetings completed, Pipeline, Win Rate, Conversion of MQLs t ...Read More

Align with the business objectives! That’s the framework. Understand and fix the gaps. You deliver whatever the business needs.   Sometimes, they may already have it, and just not know it, so as a demand gen manager, your job becomes to sift through the existing resources and deliver to the business. If it doesn’t exist, then identify the most effective way to deliver it. Are they asking for more leads? Plan to deliver more leads (because you are new and need to establish credibility), but meanw ...Read More

A start up without a demand gen manager has been relying either on organic leads or has been trying ad hoc tactics to boost the funnel. Know the current environment: It is important to understand the full extent of the existing campaigns, processes and their effectiveness. Engage with the sales teams to understand their priorities and areas where they need help.   Understand the business objectives: The next step would be to understand the business objectives from the leadership and align accord ...Read More

This is not a one-size-fits-all solution. I have found that the content pieces through the funnel vary based on what are the current business objectives, challenges and gaps. If you are a new business and trying to generate mindshare and attract visitors to your website, you’d need more assets at the top of the funnel. If you are a known brand and the space is established (e.g. CRM), then you probably need to focus more on the lower part of the funnel. Your current account strategy is also a fac ...Read More

Quick wins will look different from organization to organization, depending on the company's need and stage. As you engage with different teams in the first few weeks, you will get clarity on where the fires are. Some quick wins can look like: Revamp Email messaging: Do you need to revamp the email templates? Build Customer advocacy: Are there no customer stories? Upgrade Call scripts: Are the call scripts used by SDRs outdated? Update content: Does the website have old outdated content? Repurpo ...Read More

The most effective way is to scale in a way that best fits the organization’s needs and abilities. Build vs fix: You might want to scale the function that is either doing well or is a critical need. For example, if social campaigns are effective and you know what needs to be done and how – then hire someone so you can scale it and hand it over. That will free your bandwidth to build and scale other tactics and programs. It can also be the reverse, e.g. if the SEO is not effective and you need to ...Read More

First week should be in listen mode, understand the business priorities, current environment, challenges and needs. Speak to as many of your stakeholders as you can, especially on the sales side. It will help you understand the business, as well as help to identify the areas that need work. The first month should focus on planning some quick wins that you can deliver in the first 90 days. After the first month, finding ways to operationalize those tactics by leveraging existing assets and resour ...Read More